


Bigger Than Elvis

by PrairieDawn



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Anvilicious, Bardic Magic, Episode Fix-it, Episode: s02e02 Who Mourns for Adonis?, F/M, LLF Comment Project, Medical Trauma, Minor Spock/Nyota Uhura, Some Fluff, Traumatic Brain Injury, light innuendo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-02-19 17:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13127850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: The Enterprise encounters a powerful alien who claims to be the Greek god Apollo.





	1. The Giant Green Hand in Space

Nyota Uhura was used to being the last one out of bed. Spock got up at a literally inhumanly early hour to meditate and keep up with his own paperwork, and she suspected, Kirk’s, because let’s face it, the man might be brilliant but in a lot of ways he was an overgrown child.

There were days when she thought she and Spock were acting in loco parentis, along with in loco grandparentis McCoy.

She wasn’t being fair, it was just that Kirk had almost caused a diplomatic incident yesterday by shooting off at the mouth and she had been required to figure out how to smooth things over between her young, impetuous captain and the even younger, even more impetuous girl serving as chief representative of the Alnithi delegation. At least the princess, or equivalent, had the excuse of being sixteen.

And Spock had just stood there letting her deal with the entire situation by herself with a butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth straight face. It was his usual face, but still, she could have used a little back up.

She pulled on her uniform, the dress rather than the pants today. She usually only bothered with the pants on away missions to rustic locales featuring prickly ground cover and biting insects. A quick stop by the mirror to put her hair and face together and she headed to her duty station on the bridge. 

Spock acknowledged her arrival with a little nod, which she returned with a half smile and a hint of an eye roll at the back of the Captain’s head.

“Entering orbit around Pollux Four,” Chekov said as she took her seat to monitor subspace and, just in case, old style radio traffic. 

“Stand by, cartography,” Kirk said.

“Standing by,” Uhura responded, taking a moment as she did so to double check the mapping algorithm she had chosen to optimize detail given the cloud patterns typical of this world.

“Preliminary data, Spock?” Kirk continued.

“Pollux Four is a Class M planet with a typical oxygen nitrogen atmosphere. Oxygen at 25%, Nitrogen 72%, trace gases within safe parameters for humanoid species. Approximate age 4.1 billion years. Abundant plant life, relatively little animal life. Recommendation to assess for possible colonization is on file.”

“Cartography, implement standard orders. Flag regions most suitable for colony placement.”

“All cartographic programs fully automatic,” Uhura informed the bridge.

She looked up at the view screen and noticed the incongruous giant green hand at the same moment as Sulu. “Captain,” they said in unison.

“What in the name of…” McCoy added. By now everyone’s eyes were locked on the forward viewscreen.

Kirk managed to keep a straight face while giving his next orders. “Spock, analysis?”

In the brief pause between question and answer, Uhura tuned the comm system to receive from the hand’s location on all the likely channels and a few unlikely ones as they occurred to her.

Spock replied, “Momentarily. May I request that all members of the bridge crew key a description of what they see into their personal comms so that the results might be compared?”

Chekov tapped a few keys at his station, “So we all know we’re seeing the same thing, Spock?”

“Exactly,” the Vulcan confirmed.

Spock was thorough as always, though it wouldn’t be the first time their minds were manipulated to cause their eyes to deceive them. Uhura typed “Lime green glowing humanoid hand roughly the size of the ship” into her data station and sent it on to Spock’s.

A moment later, Spock confirmed, “We do all appear to be seeing the same object. I commend your level of detail, Lieutenant Uhura, and your colorful imagery, Mr. Chekov.” He paused to check the sensor suite. “It is not a carbon based life form, but appears to be an energy field.”

“Hard about,” Kirk said. “Let’s get get some distance between us and the object before it decides to get grabby.”

“Hard about,” Sulu confirmed. After a pause, during which the engines strained, he added, “I can’t pull away.”

Uhura watched the glowing hand approach, fingers spread. “I think it does intend to grab us,” she said.

“Reverse all engines.”

“All engines reverse.” 

The hand took hold of the ship and held it fast. Uhura held tight to keep from being thrown to the floor. For a moment, the ship groaned under the pressure and she could hear the hull plating creak and pop.

“Helm does not answer. We’re held fast,” Sulu said.

“Understood,” Kirk said. “Lieutenant Uhura, relay our position and circumstances to Starbase Twelve immediately.”

“Aye, sir, relaying with viewscreen capture,” she acknowledged, keying in the message. A part of her worried their alert might be perceived as a practical joke, though no one, not even Kirk at his silliest, not even when they had all been drunk off their asses with magic water, would send a distress call as a joke.

Kirk leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees. “Mr. Sulu, let’s try rocking the ship. Full impulse, forward and back. Spock, keep an eye on hull stress.”

“Aye,” the two men said in near unison.

Damage reports appeared on Uhura’s console. To her left, Spock said, “Hull stresses becoming unacceptable. Structural force fields unable to maintain hull integrity…”

Kirk nodded. “All right, full stop. Damage reports, Uhura?”

“Minor damage stations three, seven, and nineteen. Report situation under control.”

“Mr. Spock, status?”

Spock turned toward the Captain’s chair. “The force field nearly completely encircles the ship, despite appearances. The hand appears to be cosmetic rather than functional. At no location is there a gap large enough for us to squeeze through. It appears to have a largely conventional structure, but operates on some atypical wavelengths.”

“It is alive in any sense?” Kirk asked.

“It is not organic, nor does it possess fractal or chaotic subdomains typical of inorganic life forms. It is most likely technological.”

“Thank you. Sulu, try setting the tractor beams to repel. On my mark. Mark.”

The ship vibrated against the force field again. “Ineffective. There’s nothing for the tractor beam to push against,” Sulu reported.

“Captain,” Spock said. “I’m receiving a visual signal on scanner five seven.”

“On screen.”

The image appeared of a bronzed man, maybe thirty years old, with long dark curls cinched into an artfully messy bun, Mediterranean features, a white toga embroidered with gold thread, and a crown of gold made to look like a laurel wreath. 

“Activity on hailing channel three, sir,” Uhura reported.

“Put it on audio.”

The image acquired sound, the words first sounding in Ancient Greek, then changing to Standard as the universal translator identified the language. “The ages have passed and what has been written has come about. You are most welcome, my beloved children. Your places await you.”

“Response frequencies, Lieutenant.”

“Already calculated. Opening a channel.”

The speaker continued. “You have left your plains and valleys and made this bold venture. So it was in the beginning. You have made me proud. Now you can rest.”

Kirk tapped the comm and spoke. “This is Captain James T. Kirk of the Federation Starship Enterprise. Please identify yourself.”

“We shall remember together,” the man continued, as if he had not even heard Kirk. “We will drink the sacramental wine. There will be the music of the pipes and the lyre. The long wait has ended.”

Kirk tried again, still diplomatic but with shorter sentences in case he had not been understood the first time. “I am Captain James T. Kirk. This is the Starship Enterprise. Are you the being responsible for the force field holding this vessel?”

“Yes. I caused the wind to withdraw from your sails.”

Kirk’s mouth opened, an indignant look on his face, but at Uhura and Spock’s pointed looks he paused to think his next words through. “I request that you remove the force field holding my ship. In honor of the prior friendly relationship you claim.”

“That I claim? Do you not know me?”

“I do not know who or what you are, but if you wish to remain on friendly terms with me, you will release my ship,” Kirk demanded, his voice betraying his frustration.

“It has been five thousand years. Have you not learned patience in that time?”

Kirk turned to Uhura and made a cutting gesture. She shut off the channel and he continued. “At the moment, this being, whoever he is, has us at a disadvantage. For now, I intend to stall until reinforcements arrive or his mother shows up to give him a proper spanking. Uhura, check time until reinforcements might arrive from Starfleet. Open channel.”

Uhura could hear the change in Kirk’s voice, from belligerence to charm. “We have learned some measure of patience, and at the moment, you clearly have the upper hand.”

The being laughed. “Oh, wordplay! I do not know whether to congratulate you or crush you. Kirk, I invite you and your officers to join me. Except for the pointy eared one. He reminds me of Pan, and Pan always bored me. This is a time for rejoicing! You are returning home. Let your hearts prepare to sing!”

Kirk turned to the rest of the crew, keeping the channel open, “Anyone here rejoicing yet?” then continued without waiting for an answer. “I am insulted on my science officer’s behalf. He really doesn’t resemble Pan in the slightest.” Uhura stifled a snort.

“Do not trifle with me, mortal,” the being said.

Kirk made a conciliatory gesture with one hand. “My officers will join you as soon as my ship is released. It will not break orbit as long as we remain on the surface.” He paused for effect. “My people relish the opportunity to encounter new life forms...and get reacquainted with old friends. Consider releasing my ship an act of good faith, to show us that we may trust you.”

The silence lengthened. “A god does not need to make a show of good faith. A god is obeyed.” The being sounded uncertain, though.

Kirk turned the charm on full. “What are you the god of, might I ask?”

“Your kind recognized my particular gifts, long ago. I am the lawgiver, the patron of prophecy and healing, music, poetry, and the bow.”

Uhura sent “Apollo” to the captain through her datapad. And also, “Three weeks, at best speed. Our signal will reach Starbase 12 in roughly four hours.”

Kirk turned on his best smile. “Then I shall bring my healer and musicians to meet with you, Apollo. But not until you demonstrate your good faith.”

“Need I remind you that I hold you in my hand?” The pressure increased, slightly. Uhura’s ears popped, not painfully, but noticeably.

Kirk shook his head. “Ships have been lost to evil gods with fair faces. We have learned not to trust on sight.”

“You poor little mortals. Fear no more, for the terrors of your journey are ended. All that remains is joy.” The being spread his hands in a welcoming gesture, beaming.

Sulu looked at his monitor. “We’re free of the force field.”

Kirk said into the comm, “I look forward to greeting you. Allow me twenty minutes to make preparations. We would greet you dressed appropriately for a being of your station.” 

Kirk ordered the channel closed. “Plot a course out of here, but do not implement at this time, just hold it in reserve in case there’s a problem on the surface. Mr. Spock, you have the con. Chekov and Uhura, you’re with me. We’ll also need Dr. McCoy and Dr. Palamas.”

“Dr. Palamas plays the aulos,” Uhura said. “I will borrow Spock’s ka’athyra. I don’t have a Greek kithara, but the instruments are similar enough and I can tune it to a Greek scale.” Suspiciously similar in her opinion, but both instruments appeared on their respective home planets before even the first surreptitious contacts between humans and Vulcans, dated to roughly the 10th century BCE on the old Earth calendar. Her personal suspicion was meddling by time travelers. It was always time travelers.

“Just remember, this isn’t shore leave. We have no idea how dangerous this being who claims to be Apollo might be.”

“And you might remember that music has charms to soothe the savage breast,” Uhura teased. “Shall I collect Dr. Palamas while you get Dr. McCoy?”

“I’ll meet you in the transporter room.” He paused. “This is a first contact situation or a meeting of historical significance calling for full diplomatic dress grays.”

“Understood.”

She decided under the circumstances not to visit Carolyn in her quarters, but to go straight to her room to change. “Lieutenant Palamas,” she said into the comlink.

After a beat, the other woman responded. “Lieutenant Uhura. How can I help you?”

“We have an away mission that seems to have been custom made for you, Carrie. It’s a first contact situation with an entity who believes himself to be the Greek god Apollo. Meet me in Transporter Room Two as quickly as possible in full dress grays. And bring your aulos.”

“Sounds...interesting,” Carolyn replied. “I’m on it.”

 

She was changed and down to the transporter room in fifteen minutes, which she considered an accomplishment, given the need to redo her hair for a more formal occasion. It would not do to show up in dress grays and an unadorned ponytail. A quick twist into a bun adorned with a silver comb made to look like baby’s breath and she was suitably formal. Beauty and gravitas. She added a little silver to her makeup to complement and was out the door.

Chekov was already waiting for her, looking smart in his uniform, and perhaps a bit older. There was a blush in his smile. Mission accomplished, she thought. McCoy and Kirk appeared next, and a scant couple of minutes later Palamas arrived, her hair in a complicated up-do that seemed to have come straight off a Greek vase.

Kirk turned to all of them. “Remember, our goal is to charm this being, whatever he is, into giving us information we can use. We need to know who he really is and if the threat he poses to the ship can be resolved peacefully. Lieutenant Palamas, what can you tell us about Apollo?”

Palamas replied, “If he is really Apollo, or is credibly acting like him, we can expect him to be vain, arrogant, and volatile, but also compassionate and lawful. Also, he is, like most of the Greek gods, prone to developing crushes on humans. It is likely that any or all of us might catch his eye. It would be best not to shut him down too forcefully in the event...the Greek gods could become violent when spurned.”

“Fair warning,” Kirk said. They all stepped into their places on the transporter pad and dissolved into golden streams of light.


	2. A God With an Attitude Problem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk, McCoy, Uhura, Chekov, and Lieutenant Palamas beam down to the planet, while they are alternately threatened and hit on by Apollo.

The five of them, Uhura, Kirk, McCoy, Palamas, and Chekov materialized into a grove of trees, mostly poplars, with a scattering of oak and cypress. The landscape had the appearance of being loosely cultivated, the trees selected and planted, but allowed to grow largely undisturbed with vines, patches of flowers, and sprays of fern filling the space between them. They stood at the edge of a more formal garden with low growing vines and flowers lining paths of close laid flat stones. Short columns adorned with brightly colored statuary nestled among the flowerbeds. The trees sang with the faint buzzes and chirps of insects, though there were no birds. Palamas pointed out a few of the smaller trees in the garden, some of them trained onto braces. “Olive,” she noted to the Captain, “and those are pomegranate. That patch of red flowers there are poppies.”  
“I begin to wonder if we should have brought Mr. Sulu,” Kirk remarked. Palamas colored and stopped naming plants.

“It’s interesting that these are all recognizable Earth species, isn’t it?” Uhura said to Palamas while throwing a pointed look at the Captain.

“It is,” Kirk added, catching on. “Does that fact suggest any hypotheses, Lieutenant?”

Palamas nodded. “Earth plants are most likely either copies or transplants, so either whoever lives on this world has been to Earth and brought back samples of Mediterranean species, or they have reconstructed them by studying information from Earth.”

“So, from the ship’s memory banks?”

“Perhaps, though it would seem to me this would take a long time to grow.” Palamas stopped near a statue to examine a detail on its painted hairpiece.

Uhura and Chekov quickened their steps to place themselves ahead of the others as they rounded a corner. A white stone roof could be seen around and behind the garden plantings, but the corner was blind at ground level. Uhura didn’t move her hand toward her sidearm, but a corner of her mind rehearsed the movements to pull and aim it at any threat that might appear.

Around the corner they found themselves in a courtyard facing a pergola. The man they had seen on screen sat on a low, minimalist throne, legs crossed casually, arms spread and resting on the throne’s sides. Around the borders of the courtyard stood more statues in the Greek style, also brightly painted with such care and sensitivity that they looked almost as if they could step off their pedestals and speak. 

The man who claimed to be Apollo spoke. “Long have I waited for this moment. The memories you bring of your lush and beautiful Earth, the green fields and blue skies, the simple shepherds and their flocks.”

Kirk stepped into the space directly in front of the putative god, gesturing Palamas to stand at his left hand, McCoy on his right. Uhura and Chekov took places to either side, Uhura next to Palamas, Chekov by McCoy, both at parade rest. Kirk spoke, his posture and voice formal. “Apollo of..ah...ancient Greece. We greet you as representatives of the United Federation of Planets. May I introduce these members of my crew, Doctor McCoy, a physician, Lieutenant Palamas, a historian, Lieutenant Uhura, a student of languages and accomplished musician, and Ensign Chekov, a technician and scientist.”

“Natural philosopher,” Palamas clarified. 

“It is my delight to welcome you home to my domain.” Apollo, it was just easier to refer to him as Apollo, stood and descended the steps with the unhurried confidence of a master of his domain. He stopped a few feet from Kirk.

“If you are the famed Apollo, how did you come to be here?” Kirk said. The rest of them remained at parade rest, though Palamas held a recording device in her hands turned on Kirk and Apollo. Uhura kept an eye on the perimeter, in case the being were not alone. 

“O my children, Zeus, Athena, Aphrodite, Artemis my sister, we were a gallant band of travelers. We knew Earth well five thousand years ago. Once, I stretched out my hand, and Earth trembled,” the person calling himself Apollo said. Still set on impressing them with his power, Uhura noted. “And I breathed upon it, and spring returned,” he continued. “Your forefathers knew me well, and worshipped me.”

Maybe the others’ forefathers, Uhura thought. Not as much hers. The being’s arrogance was rapidly losing what charm it might have had. She found herself wondering if Anansi was out in the black somewhere. He might be better company. She forced herself to stop and remember her first contact training. Her personal impression of the being as an arrogant ass could not be allowed to get in the way of the possibility of forming a mutually beneficial relationship. Spock was better at putting aside his personal opinions of people in service of a greater goal, probably because he spent so much time being the smartest person in the room. He had the beginnings of a real statesman in him, but he wasn’t here.

“You’ll find we humans have grown up since you last had dealings with us. We are not so given to worship as we used to be.” Kirk took a couple of steps closer to Apollo, hand extended. 

Apollo flicked his eyes downward briefly, taking in the gesture. “You dare to greet me as an equal?” He raised his own right hand as though to strike the Captain. Chekov rushed forward, a little too quickly, perhaps. Apollo flicked his hand and Chekov was enveloped in a brief flash of light, which threw him backward a couple of steps. Uhura stepped closer to the Captain while Apollo was looking at Chekov, but made no other threatening moves. 

Chekov fell, but rolled and recovered to sit on the ground, rubbing the back of his neck. McCoy knelt beside him, medical scanner out and running. “You alright, son?” he said. Chekov swore in Russian, but allowed McCoy to help him to his feet. Uhura saw McCoy take a moment to turn the scanner in Apollo’s direction as well.

Apollo regarded each of them in turn. “A few men of old believed themselves our equals. Agamemnon, Odysseus...great men they were, but they learned not to trifle with gods.” The putative deity stepped off his dais to approach Kirk and behind him, Palamas. “Earth,” he said, his voice softening. “Home to the most beautiful of beings in the universe. That at least has not changed.” His gaze flitted from person to person, alighting the longest on Palamas and Kirk himself. “Such noble and lovely youths and superbly beautiful maidens you have among you.” His tone might have been interpreted as seductive in a previous millenium. Uhura found it disturbingly predatory. He stepped toward Kirk first. “I assume you to be the son of a king, that you display such arrogance.”

“You leave my father out of this,” Kirk said. ““Readings, Doctor?” he added quietly, to McCoy.

“He scans humanoid, though he isn’t precisely human,” McCoy replied.

“You presume much, Captain Kirk.” Apollo appeared to weigh the necessity of smiting the Captain. “Mind your tongue.” 

“We agreed to come here to pay our respects, to renew old ties on new terms. You in turn treat us with contempt. What do you expect from us?” The words came out a little more sharply than Uhura would have said them, perhaps more sharply than Kirk intended.

Apollo looked down on Kirk, pointedly, from his position on the steps leading to his throne. “You will remain here with me in Paradise,” he said.

Kirk immediately turned away from Apollo to call the Enterprise. Crackling static erupted from the communicator. “Kirk to Enterprise,” he said, but there was no answer.

“I will not permit your devices to function here,” Apollo said.

Well, fuck, Uhura thought. Chekov wisely shifted position to a spot a little out of Apollo’s sight line. She reasoned that, were their phasers to work at all, they would only work once, and then only if used before Apollo knew what they were. She hoped Chekov realized that as well and didn’t call attention to his unless he was in a position to use it. 

Palamas took a half step forward and smiled more broadly in the direction of Apollo, though at that moment his eyes weren’t focused on her, but were still on the Captain. They all had their roles to play.

“What do you want from us?” Kirk tucked his communicator back into his pocket. Apollo loomed over him, but he held his ground.

“You will worship me, as your fathers did before you.”

Not likely. It was frustrating that there was so little she could do at this point. It was the Captain’s move. “That’s not going to happen,” Kirk said. “You can call yourself a god,   
Apollo, but you will not get worship out of us.”

“I said you will worship me!” Apollo demanded.

“Then you’ve got a lot to learn!” Kirk shouted back.

“As do you!” Apollo retorted. “Let the lesson begin!”

Apollo abruptly expanded to a height of roughly four meters. Uhura wondered, and not idly, whether the effect was illusion, whether he had puffed up, becoming larger but less dense like a giant marshmallow, or whether he was able to borrow mass from somewhere else. It wasn’t idle speculation by any means. The answer to that question might determine how to bring the giant down. “Welcome to Olympus, Captain.”

He stood still, enlarged in that way, for perhaps fifteen seconds more, saying nothing more, then abruptly faded. Illusion, then, most likely.

McCoy looked around at all of them. “To coin a phrase, fascinating.”

“Indeed,” Uhura replied, using Spock’s intonation, then smiled at McCoy and added, “He looked exhausted just before he faded. Maybe manifesting in that way took a lot of energy.”

They all walked forward into the space Apollo’s enlarged image occupied, scanning. Kirk flipped his communicator open to check for signal. He held it up to the rest of the team and shook his head. “Our first task is to identify and locate whatever he’s using for power. Chekov, scan everywhere you can, look for any unusual readings. Palamas, you have the most knowledge of ancient Earth history. Are there any discrepancies from classical views of Apollo here?”

Palamas began, “Not that I’ve noticed. It is significant that the sculptures are painted. It is not common knowledge that classical Greek sculpture was painted, so the images in our minds when we think of classical Greece generally assume them to be raw marble, just like most images in the Enterprise computer banks show white marble statuary. 

Also, the painting style is consistent with Greek sensibilities, while differing somewhat from the modern consensus of how the sculptures were adorned. Both of these things suggest a working memory of ancient Greece, rather than the ability to draw our modern expectations of ancient Greece from the ship’s memory banks and recreate it here.”

“In short, Lieutenant?”

“In short, I think whoever he was, he lived in ancient Greece.”

Kirk looked back to the space where the enlarged Apollo had stood. “Well, Apollo or not, if he thinks we’re going to fall down and worship him, he’s got another think coming.”

“Well, he’s certainly not going to get what he wants by demanding it,” Uhura added, hoping she wasn’t breaking into the Captain’s flow too much, but she had a thought in mind, too nebulous as yet to put into words. An out.

“Humans don’t worship gods anymore,” Kirk said.

“Not in the way we used to five thousand years ago,” she allowed.

He turned to gesture to McCoy, who was running his own scanner near the throne. “Come join us a minute. I need an opinion.”

“Alright.” The doctor jogged down the stairs.

“Palamas tells me she believes it is likely that he has been to Greece around five thousand years ago.”

McCoy considered. “That so.”

“I have a theory. It seems a bit far fetched, so I wanted to run it past all three of you. What if this being really is Apollo?”

“If he was there at the time, it’s almost more likely he was the person who inspired the Apollo myths than not. He coud certainly have made an impressive show for the people who lived there at the time. The mythology surrounding the Greek pantheon disagrees in particulars even with itself, so we can’t be sure which stories that have been passed down are true and which aren’t,” Palamas said. She was working herself up to another lecture.

“But it’s a solid working hypothesis,” Uhura summarized.

Uhura took Dr. Palamas aside while Kirk consulted with McCoy. The academic might be an expert on ancient cultures, but this was still her first away mission and she was new to the ship. Uhura wanted to be sure the other woman didn’t feel isolated. “You okay, Carolyn?”

“I’m fine. Thinking. We’re not going to convince him to back down with a direct approach and right now he’s got the upper hand.” She bit her lip.

“And?” Uhura prompted.

“I don’t want…” she shook her head. “This is silly. I don’t want to see him hurt either whether he is Apollo or not. I don’t know, I just want there to be a way out of this for all of us.”

“I have an idea, Carolyn,” Uhura began, but she was interrupted by Chekov.

“Captain,” he said.

They all turned to follow his voice. Apollo had returned, appearing on his throne in the same relaxed, commanding pose he had taken earlier. He reminded Uhura of Kirk, really. Perhaps that’s why they bristled so much in each other’s presence.

“I want from you that which is rightfully mine,” Apollo said, the reverberating amplification back in his voice. “Your loyalty, your tribute, and your worship.”

McCoy stayed the Captain with a touch to the forearm. Kirk made a face, his back to Apollo, but nodded. McCoy approached Apollo in the Captain’s stead. “May I ask what you offer in return?”

“Life in paradise, as simple and pleasurable as it was those thousands of years ago on that beautiful planet so far away,” Apollo answered.

Kirk turned back toward him. “Apollo,” Kirk said, visibly restraining himself, “We’re willing to talk, but you’ll find that if you want simple shepherds you’ve stopped the wrong ship.”

“You remind me so much of Hercules,” Apollo said, disapproval hardening his voice. “Pride and arrogance. Continue in this defiance and you will feel my wrath.” 

Uhura looked up at Apollo. “Wrath doesn’t work any more with humans. Five thousand years of war and suffering and slavery and we’ve gotten good and sick of might making right.” She stopped to find the right words. “We don’t trust power any more.”

“I have 430 people on my ship up there to worry about,” Kirk began.

“No, you don’t. They are mine, to save, cherish, or destroy at my will.”

“Then we will defy you to our last breath.” He caught Uhura’s gaze for a moment before turning back to Apollo. “We have outgrown slavery.”

“You will learn in time,” Apollo pronounced.

Palamas stepped forward, seeing her opening. “Why must you act this way? Do you wish us to fear you?”

Apollo arose from his throne to approach her, a smile touching his lips. Uhura took a step away from her to give the being room, but stood at the ready to protect the younger woman should it be necessary. “How like Aphrodite you are, the beauty and grace. And you seem”...he turned for a moment to Uhura with a more puzzled smile than the one he bestowed on Palamas, “both of you seem unusually wise and forward for women. More like youths.”

“Women have not been content to serve as mere decorations for a long time,” Palamas said gently, returning his smile.

“And yet you take care to present yourself in such lovely fashion, though your raiment leaves something to be desired. What is your name?”

“Lieutenant Carolyn Palamas. And my clothes, our clothes, are the formal dress uniform of Starfleet. Clothes we wear to show respect to dignitaries and heads of state on formal occasions.”

“But they are so dull, Carolyn, though you would do Aphrodite credit in any clothing. I would tell you so many tales, of courage and love. You will know what it is to be a goddess.”

Uhura cast a sharp look in Palamas direction. Palamas shook her head slightly and returned her attention to Apollo.

Chekov started forward. “Captain, are we just going to allow him to talk that way to…”

Kirk stopped him. “Ensign, I think the Lieutenant has the situation well in hand.”

Apollo ignored the interruption. “You are a beauty as you are, but I believe other raiment might be more suitable.” He waved a hand, and Palamas’ clothes rearranged themselves with a shimmer resembling a transporter. For a moment her naked form could just be distinguished through the haze. Uhura averted her eyes politely along with the rest of the crew, though Apollo noticeably did not turn away. When Uhura looked back at Palamas, she was wearing a full length rose colored dress, fit loosely about her body and pinned at the shoulders. A pattern of laurel leaves and tiny gemstones wound through the fabric and a braided belt at the waist gave the dress a semblance of shape.

“Oh it’s beautiful...the embroidery is exquisite,” Palamas breathed, looking down at herself.

“Yes, though not as lovely as you, Carolyn.” Apollo extended his hand. “Come,” he said. Palamas took his hand and allowed him to walk beside her.

Uhura quickened her own steps to follow. “A maid her age should have a chaperone to make sure she behaves herself,” she told Apollo.

“I’ll be fine,” Palamas assured her. “I can handle myself.”

Uhura turned to Apollo, her face stern. “You hurt her, you answer to me.”

Apollo laughed. “And what would you do, a mere mortal, against a god?”

“Try me,” Uhura replied.

Apollo raised his hand in a threatening gesture briefly, but paused. “I will not strike down a lady such as yourself without fair warning, but know I do not take kindly to disrespect.”

“Come on, Lieutenant, let us have some time alone to get to know each other,” Palamas said, pulling Apollo along gently by the arm. He captured her arm and held it close, resting his other hand on top of it possessively. She leaned into his side to gaze up onto his face. If she was playacting, it was disconcertingly effective playacting.

“Come with me. I would show you the gardens,” Apollo said, leading Palamas around the corner. From Uhura’s vantage point, she could see that the two of them did not merely round the corner, but vanished, in much the same way as Apollo had earlier.

McCoy jogged over to her. “I’m not sure it’s wise to let her go off with him like that.”

“She’s a big girl, and she’s buying us time to talk alone. Besides, I doubt I could have stopped him.”

The doctor frowned. “You saw how capricious he is, jumping from benevolence to angry threats in a moment. If she displeases him, he could kill her.”

Uhura nodded. “And that’s exactly why she’s the one going with him. She is the best qualified person for the job, and she likes him well enough to want to stay on his good side.”

“Uhura’s right,” Kirk said. “The three of you, continue to see if you can locate his power source. To Uhura, he added, “I don’t know what he sees in her.”

Uhura rolled her eyes at the Captain. “Yeah, right, I saw you checking out his ass. I mean if I didn’t have a smoking hot alien of my own... Seriously, though, he is the embodiment of everything she’s devoted her life to. I imagine she’d be content to listen to him talk about his past for a decade.”

That was it. We don’t bow, they kept saying. But they did bow, just in different ways, and to different people. Fame, worship even could be earned, but power was not how it was earned anymore. “Captain,” she started.

“Yes, lieutenant. And I wasn’t checking out Apollo’s ass.”

“Of course not, Captain. I’ve been thinking. We try to suppress the urge to worship power because we know the harm it does. But we do worship knowledge, learning, the ability to create beauty. Apollo wasn’t remembered for five thousand years for being powerful, he was remembered for his music, his dedication to healing and medicine, knowledge and the law. If we can convince him to work with us rather than against us, he can have all the worship he wants and more.”

“But we have to convince him first.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some fixits of note: First, while Kirk still struggles with his temper, he and the other males don't act like elk in rut.
> 
> Greek statues were painted and Palamas is smart.
> 
> Apollo dresses Palamas in something plausibly ancient Greek.


	3. Necessary Roughness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apollo continues to demonstrate an unwillingness to rein in his power, despite Carolyn Palamas efforts, so the landing party decide they must destroy his power source.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so nobody gets blindsided, this occurs during a time in which Spock and Uhura are in a relationship from a canon viewpoint and that relationship is briefly referenced.

After Palamas had gone off to who knew where with Apollo, Uhura returned to the garden to assist Chekov with his search for Apollo’s power source, taking one end of the ox plow scanning pattern he had begun. 

Chekov stopped in front of the pergola to retrace his steps along a three meter length. “Captain,” he said, raising his voice to be heard across the clearing, “My instruments are picking up a regular energy pattern. Pulsed radiation emanating from a source somewhere nearby.”

Uhura acknowledged him with a wave. “Keep taking readings. Pinpoint it if you can.”

Kirk approached them. “Apollo is probably tapping into that energy source. We need to be able to switch it off if we need to.”

“We don’t know what that will do to him, Captain,” Uhura cautioned.

“At need, as I said,” Kirk clarified.

Now that she had his attention, she continued. “When Apollo returns, try to turn the conversation to music.”

“Why?”

“Look. Apollo wants worship. We all know humans don’t worship people for the same reasons we used to.”Kirk snapped, “We don’t worship anyone!”

“Really?” Uhura countered. “Scientists? Explorers? Artists? If we can convince him to focus on the talents he’s celebrated for, music for example, rather than trying to impress us with raw power, those youths and maidens he likes so much will throw their panties at him from here to Antares.”

Kirk shook his head, clearly frustrated. “How does that get us clear of him now?”

“If we can convince him to let us spread the word about him and he’ll have plenty of people ready and willing to come here voluntarily. If he can be persuaded to give up some of that power, he might even be able to tour. He’d be bigger than Elvis.”

“If he’s actually any good.”

“If he’s actually Apollo, he’d almost have to be.”

“I appreciate your optimism, Lieutenant,” Kirk said. “But we have to prepared for the possibility that it’s going to be us or him.”

Uhura nodded. “I am, sir.”

McCoy trotted over to join the discussion. “Any luck on the energy source?”

“We’re definitely getting closer. If I had to guess, it’s somewhere under the pergola. What we don’t know yet is how far below ground it is.”

Kirk turned to McCoy. “Do you have any theories as to how Apollo is able to channel that energy?”

McCoy shrugged. “According to my scans, he’s not human, but he’s not all that different either--closer to human than Spock is, really. A few minor variations in organ arrangements, both lungs have two lobes, for example. There is an extra organ in his upper abdomen, just below the diaphragm. It’s possible he uses it to channel electrical energy.”

“Like an electric eel!” Chekov interjected.

“Something like that,” McCoy agreed.

“Bones, is it possible…” Kirk started to say.

“Jim!” McCoy jerked his head in the direction of Apollo, who emerged out of nothingness to stride toward them, alone.

“Where’s Lieutenant Palamas?” Kirk demanded upon seeing him.

“She is no longer of any concern to you,” Apollo replied.Uhura whirled on him. “Palamas is all of our concern. If you’ve hurt her…”

He caught her arm as she gestured, apparently thinking that she intended to strike him.

“Let her go,” Kirk warned, drawing his phaser.

Apollo raised a hand. Lightning crackled from it to surround Kirk in a bluish nimbus. He fell backwards, the phaser flying from his hand, an unrecognizable twist of plastic and metal.

Apollo kept hold of Uhura’s wrist. “Chekov, stay back,” Uhura warned. 

McCoy hurried over to where Kirk lay twitching. “It’s a bad shock,” he said, holding his medical tricorder over the nonresponsive Captain’s chest, “but his heartbeat looks strong.” He knelt over the Captain and after a moment’s fishing pressed a hypospray to his neck, then waited, frowning.

Apollo looked back and forth from Uhura to the Captain at least twice, eyes too wide open. “You will learn discipline,” Apollo said, but his voice faltered slightly at the end.

Where his hand encircled her wrist, Uhura could feel a static electric fizz. “Is that what you really want?” she said. Why was that buzzing familiar? “After all this time? Slaves?” She scrubbed absently at the back of her neck with her free hand.

“I desire companionship, followers. It is my right. You belong to me!” There was something more than ordinary entitlement in his voice. Something pressured, almost shrill. 

Chekov took advantage of his preoccupation with her and with the Captain and McCoy on the ground to creep behind him. He drew his phaser, tried to fire it, and looked down in horror when it didn’t respond.

Apollo whirled around and flung him to the ground with another bolt of energy, this one less powerful, at least as evidenced by the fact that he sat up immediately to clench and unclench his fists, as though they were numb.

“You must love me. You must…” His face crumpled in pain. His hand opened. Uhura pulled her wrist away to rub it as he faded away.

Uhura immediately jogged over to where Doctor McCoy worked over Kirk. “Is he going to be okay?”

The captain lay curled in a fetal position, muscles tensed, fingers and feet shivering slightly. McCoy blew out a breath, eyes focused on the tricorder. “He’s seizing. I’ve already given him a neurostabilizer. If I give him anything stronger, it will put him out for at least an hour.”

“And if you don’t?”

“I’ll give him another minute. If the seizure lasts any longer than that he’ll be out of commission for that long anyway.”

“That means you’re in command, Doctor,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, I know. I see Apollo has left us again.”

Chekov stomped over, presumably working the feeling back into his feet. “Did you see how he looked when he disappeared?”

“Yeah, almost like he was in pain. There was something else, though.” She couldn’t quite place it. 

“He’s done it twice now. He can use a lot of power, but he can’t keep it up. He has to leave to...recharge his batteries or something.” Chekov crouched next to McCoy, eyes on the Captain.

McCoy tucked the medical tricorder back into its case and addressed them both. “The seizure has ended on its own, but it could be a while before the Captain wakes up. The medication I gave him when the seizure began should shorten the postictal state, but I can’t tell yet if there’s underlying damage.”

“Orders, Doctor?” Uhura prompted.

“Our first priority has to be separating him from his source of power. Problem is, he may be dependent on that power for his survival. We could kill him.” While he spoke, he continued to fuss over Kirk, ensuring he was laid out comfortably, checking his pupils and pulse, glancing at the readings on his tricorder.

“I hate to say it, but we may have to risk it.” Uhura rubbed at her wrist, remembering the odd sensation. “Oh! He feels like…” she censored herself quickly. “I suspect he may be empathic. At least.”

“Why?” Chekov asked.

“Um.” Uhura glanced back toward the pergola while her brain searched for words. “He feels like an open subspace channel sounds.”

“Metaphorically speaking,” McCoy noted.

“No.” Uhura disagreed, then returned to the pergola to continue the scans.

Chekov joined her, concentrating his search on the grassy area in front of the pergola. Uhura was making a pass near the throne when her tricorder detected a slight power surge. She had just begun to triangulate the source when Apollo appeared on the throne with Palamas standing at his side.

Apollo’s gaze passed over all of them, pausing where the doctor still knelt by the Captain. He stood. “Physician, why has your ship’s Captain not awakened?”

“Because you damn near killed him! Lightning will do that to a human body,” McCoy snapped.

“I don’t…” Apollo’s voice trailed off. He frowned at the ground, then looked up. “I fail to understand why you will not obey me as you must.”

A light on Uhura’s tricorder blinked. They had the location of the power source triangulated. She sent the data to McCoy’s tricorder. “Apollo,” she said, as gently as she could manage. Now all they were waiting for was a signal from the ship---if Spock could figure out how to get one through.

The deity looked down at her, expression softening slightly. “Yes, child?”

She considered calling him out on his term of address, but decided that to do so would be counterproductive. “What is it you really want from us? Not the particulars. I find it hard to believe you are that fond of sheep.”

“He needs love,” Palamas said. God, Palamas could be naive. Uhura must have communicated her frustration to the younger woman somehow, because Palamas shook her head. “I mean he needs love the way you and I need food and drink. He’s starving, nearly mad with need.”

“Carolyn,” Apollo protested.

“You are,” Palamas told him. She rested her head on his shoulder and squeezed his arm. “And I’m not enough for you.”

Apollo sighed. “I have been alone for far too long. My people have all drifted away on the wind. And you…you must miss me too, though you don’t remember. I can give you paradise if you would just accept my rule.”

Uhura pressed forward, still hoping she might be able to convince him to see reason. “Kirk was wrong about humans not worshipping anyone anymore, you know. We just don’t worship power. We worship art, talent, knowledge. It’s not just that we don’t want to herd sheep and be ruled by a god, it’s that we can’t anymore and be happy. If you keep us here, our misery will make you miserable in turn.”

“You will learn in time. You must learn.” He raised his voice so Chekov and McCOy could hear. “You will gather laurel leaves, light the ancient fires. Kill a deer and make sacrifices to me.”

“I’m too busy cleaning up your mess at the moment,” McCoy snapped.

Apollo stepped forward, fist raised. “Stay your hand, love,” Palamas said. “Give them time. Come away with me a while.” She wrapped her hands around his impressive bicep and turned him toward her.

“Very well, dear Carolyn, let us away.” With that, the two of them faded out of sight again.

As soon as they vanished, McCoy gestured Uhura and Chekov over to them urgently. She jogged over to the patch of grass on which Kirk lay, Chekov following. “How is he?” she asked.

“Better. We’ve got intermittent communication with the ship. I’ve sent them the coordinates of the power source.”

On the ground, Kirk blinked. His mouth worked, but no sound came out. Chekov and McCoy moved to shift him to a sitting position. McCoy turned back to Uhura. “I want to wait a while for Jim to recover before we hit the temple.”

“That will give Palamas a little longer to work on him, too,” Uhura said.

“He’s too set in his ways,” McCoy warned. “Men like that don’t change. He’s at least five thousand years old, and he’s been alone here for we don’t know how long.”

“If we give him what he wants,” Kirk said, his voice soft and slurred as though he had been drinking. “If we worship him, he will never let us go.”

“Jim?” McCoy said, bending to look him in the eye. “Jim, what’s your full name and rank?”

“James Tiberius Kirk. Captain.” His voice caught briefly, but he coughed and recovered.

“Where are you?”

Kirk spread out his hands and rubbed them over the ground. “Grass. Sky. I’m on a planet, Bones.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

The Captain was silent for a minute. “No, that’s dumb. Mapping some class M planet out in the boonies. In my chair.”

“What’s dumb?” McCoy prompted.

“I had a dream. There was this guy who claimed to be a god and he was holding us prisoner.”

“That’s fine,” McCoy told him. “Not a dream. Take a moment to get your bearings.”

Uhura stood up, ostensibly to fine tune the readings on the energy source to send to the ship, but mostly to relieve the awkwardness of three people staring at Kirk while his brain shook all the lightning out of it. She sat down on the steps of the pergola, tricorder in hand. Kirk was right. If Apollo had the power to keep them on the planet, he couldn’t be trusted not to use it, even if he could be persuaded to promise to refrain. They were going to have to take out the power source and hope the shock didn’t kill Apollo outright.

Another power spike heralded an arrival. The tricorder chirped and added the new data to its analysis of the power source. To her left, next to a large urn, Carolyn   
Palamas faded into view, her dress slightly askew, face flushed, hair disheveled.

She ran to Uhura and crouched down beside her, smiling broadly. “Nyota, you never told me how much fun...”

“Stop talking.” Uhura said. “Just stop. No. Shut your mouth right now.” Palamas’ mouth snapped shut. “Ground rules. We do not discuss my sex life on missions. Now, report, Palamas.”

“He’s wonderful and I… I think I may be starting to love him.”

“Because he’s a good lay?”

“Because he’s so...he knows so much, so much history and...I did what you said. I asked him to sing for me.” Palamas stopped to gaze off into middle distance. Uhura felt transported back to junior high school. “It was...I can’t describe it.”

“He came close to killing the captain,” Uhura reminded her.

“Who threatened him with a phaser.” 

“He’s holding us here against our will.”

Palamas sighed. “I don’t think he can live without us. He wants to make us happy. He wants to make a peaceful home for us here.”

Uhura took the younger woman by the shoulders to look her in the eye. “You need to convince him that there’s a better way. You know how many people would be happy to come here, to learn from him, to create music with him...hell, probably to herd sheep for him...If they came of their own free will. Takes all kinds.”

Palamas bit her lip, uncertain. “I don’t know. Do you think?”

“I do. Try to imagine the very best future he could have.”

She chewed her bottom lip. “A University. He could teach music, and perhaps medical research as well--depending on whether his knowledge is advanced compared to ours anymore. And classical history and philosophy.”

“Picture it, with all the details. Go back and tell him all about it. Describe it to him in as much detail as you can imagine. Make sure he understands that we can’t bring him the love he needs unless we’re free.”

“I’ll try.”

“Good. Do you want Chekov or me to come back with you?”

“No, he trusts me. I’ll do my best.” Palamas lifted her skirts slightly to jog back over to the spot where she had appeared and faded away again.

Uhura had failed to mention their plans to strike the temple, not quite accidentally. She hurried over to the three men still crouched on the ground. “Palamas is trying to talk some sense into Apollo.”

Kirk seemed much improved. The color had returned to his face and he was sitting up, cross legged and unsupported by either McCoy or Chekov. “We need to take out that power source as soon as possible.”

Kirk’s comlink chirped. He grabbed at it and flipped it open, dropping it in the process. McCoy picked it up and held it up to his face. “Kirk here.”

“Captain!” Spock’s voice came over the link. “Are you well?” The communication was scratchy with static.

“I haven’t been drinking or anything. Just took a bit of a shock. I’m sending the coordinates for Apollo’s power source now.” He nodded to Uhura, who sent the data from her tricorder up to the ship.

“Received. May I assume negotiations are going poorly?”

Kirk sighed. “That’s an understatement. We’re going to need to take out the power source.”

“Palamas is with Apollo,” Uhura repeated. “Has the ship been able to pinpoint where they go?”

Spock paused, as though consulting with other people on the bridge. “No. The scanners aren’t able to punch through the forcefield.”

“We have to do this while Apollo is distracted or we may not be able to break free,” Kirk said.

“Understood, Captain,” Spock said. “Readying phasers. Move at least one hundred meters from the temple area. We will attempt to locate Lieutenant Palamas and beam her out as soon as sensors and transporters are fully back on line.”

"Help me up,” Kirk said. Chekov and McCoy lifted him to his feet.

The four of them hurried back around the stand of trees and behind a large boulder, still in sight of the pergola, but about a hundred meters away. Once they had taken shelter, Uhura told the captain, “Apollo appears to subsist on positive emotional resonance. He needs to be loved and admired--the solitude is probably part of why he’s behaving so rigidly. It’s likely that he is desperate for companionship.”

“You’re starting to talk like Spock, you know that,” Kirk remarked. “Regardless of his needs, no one has the right to demand worship from other people,” Kirk said.

“I know. Once his power source is down, he’s likely to be no longer a physical threat. At that point, we’ll have to figure out what to do about him.”

The comlink opened. “Are all crew members accounted for and under cover, Captain?” 

Kirk took his communicator back from McCoy. “We’re still missing Palamas. We’re hoping attacking the temple will draw him out so we can pinpoint her location once the force fields are down.” 

“Acknowledged. Phasers firing in five, four, three, two, one…”

Pale pinkish light, the effect of the phaser energy interacting with the planet’s atmosphere, formed a column from the ship far above them to the pergola. Nothing else happened for the space of a breath, then the ground began to rumble and the structure to take on a yellow glow as it absorbed energy. Apollo appeared beside it, with Palamas standing beside him for a fraction of a second before they both crouched against the blast of heat and he scooped her into his arms and bowed his body over her. He ran directly away from the blast, the two of them silhouetted against the glow of the crumbling pergola, stumbling twice as the ground swelled and shook beneath them. Something below the surface imploded, the structure collapsed into the pit formed, and the shock wave threw the two of them forward a few meters to land, crumpled, on the ground.  
They lay there for perhaps two or three seconds, half shrouded in smoke and burning grass, then Apollo hauled himself to his knees, lifted the limp form of Palamas to his chest, and looked frantically around for a direction in which to run. Spock’s voice came over the comm. “Transporters are functional.”

“Beam up all life signs!” Kirk shouted.

Uhura’s vision filled with golden sparks.


	4. Everything is gonna be alright...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apollo and Carolyn Palamas are beamed back to the Enterprise, severely injured.

When Uhura materialized on the transporter pad, Apollo was beside her, still cradling Palamas.  He collapsed to his knees, his bronze complexion dusted with ash, reddened and in places blotched with blisters already rising and crusted with char.

Uhura turned to see that M’Benga and Chapel were already waiting with a pair of antigrav gurneys.  She turned to Apollo.  “Let the physicians take her,” she told him while gently extricating Palamas.

Uhura and Chapel lifted together to lay Palamas on the first gurney.  She looked less badly burned than Apollo, but she was distressingly pale under the ash and dirt, and the left side of her face was badly gashed, the cheek misshapen.

“Dr. McCoy, is the captain stable enough that you can help me with Palamas?” Christine was making an effort to keep her voice level, but Uhura could hear the slight tremor in it that meant trouble.   Evidently, so could McCoy, because he patted the Captain on the arm by way of dismissal and immediately crouched over the gurney to shine a light into Palamas’ eyes.

“Follow us to Sickbay, Jim,” McCoy said.

“I’m fine, Bones”.

“I’ll be the judge of that.”  McCoy caught Uhura by the shoulder.  “Help M’Benga with Apollo.”

“Sir,” she acknowledged.   Apollo knelt on the transporter pad, head down, hands hanging limp between his knees.  His clothes hung off him in ash darkened rags, the skin of his back bright red and weeping where it wasn’t scorched black.  Aside from the front few rows of straggling curls, his hair was burned off, the scalp severely burned.  She wasn’t sure where she could touch him to move him.

“Carolyn,” he murmured.  

“It’s okay, McCoy took her back to sickbay, he’ll fix her right up,” Uhura told him.

He started to shake his head no, but stopped himself.  “She’s dying.  Have to get to her.”  

M’Benga ran his scanner over Apollo’s body and frowned at the readings.  “I need you to help me get you up onto the bed.”

Apollo didn’t answer.  

“Apollo, we’re taking you to her.  Uhura, guide him up and onto the bed.”  M’Benga placed his hands under Apollo’s arms, not so much to lift as to direct.  The doctor winced briefly, breath hissing between his teeth, then blinked a couple of times fast.  “Belay that a moment, Lieutenant.  Our friend here is in a lot of pain.”

“I can deal,” Uhura assured him, then took Apollo by one of the less burned patches on his arm, tugging her uniform sleeve down over her palm to keep from touching his skin.  She didn’t quite feel what Apollo felt, she was sure, but her skin pricked and stung as though she had caught a near miss from a phaser.  The two of them maneuvered Apollo onto the gurney face down.  M’Benga took a moment to flip a cool, white cloth over the alien’s naked backside, then turned to pull the gurney as quickly as possible toward the turbolift.  Once Uhura got herself turned around, she helped guide the gurney from the other end and hit the buttons on the turbolift to direct it to sickbay.

“Can you tell me your name?” M’Benga said to Apollo.

Apollo’s voice wasn’t much above a whisper.  “Phoebus Apollo.  Lawgiver, God of Healing and Music...not so different, healing and music…Carolyn...”

“I tell you what, Apollo.  You stay with me, we’ll talk shop once we’ve gotten you patched up, healer to healer.  I won’t make you listen to me sing, though.”  He paused to tell Uhura,  “Second and third degree burns over at least forty percent of his body, probably more.  I’m not seeing any internal injuries, though.”

“I think he was on fire when the transporter caught him.  The transporter algorithm extinguished the flames.”

M’Benga ran a scanner over Apollo’s body and frowned.  “What can you tell me about him?”

“Physically?  Do you have McCoy’s scans?”

“I do have that much.”

They exited the turbolift and maneuvered the gurney into Sickbay, where a tall, brick shaped nurse Uhura didn’t remember--must be new--rushed up to the gurney.  M’Benga said, “Stick around, Lieutenant, I still need as much information as you can give me about our friend, here.  Besides, he seems to like you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Uhura confirmed.

M’Benga and the burly nurse shifted Apollo to the biobed.  The nurse flipped on the decontamination field, while M’Benga started entering data into the computer station next to the bed, presumably calibrating tissue regeneration equipment to best fit Apollo’s cellular structure.  “So, he’s got an an organ for processing and directing electrical energy, but it’s not certain whether he needs electrical input to survive long term.  Did we get the frequency of the power source he was using on the planet?”

“I’ll enter it in,” Uhura told him.  “He also appears to require positive emotional resonance.”

“Don’t we all?” M’Benga quipped.  “I assume you mean in a direct, literal sense, the way Vulcans do and claim they don’t?”

Uhura smiled.  M’Benga and, once in a while, McCoy or Kirk would make a remark that showed they saw right through Spock’s show of stoic independence.  “Yes.  Though Apollo seemed to believe he needed worship...I’m not sure that’s entirely true.  It may be that’s just what he was used to getting from humans in the distant past.”

“Where is Carolyn?” Apollo asked again.  He grabbed at M’Benga’s arm.  

The doctor started to pull away, but shook his head.  Instead, he patted the large hand and repeated, “She’s in good hands.”  He turned to the nurse.  “Issa, begin the dermal regeneration cycles on the second degree burns.  I’m going to run an analysis for an analgesic that isn’t too likely to kill him.”

Uhura waited for M’Benga to turn back to her before continuing.  “He and Palamas began a romantic relationship while we were on the planet.”

M’Benga nodded.  While he worked, tapping keys one handed and fishing through the drawer by the bed for supplies, he kept in physical contact with Apollo at all times.  “I see.  Apollo, Dr. McCoy is the Chief Medical Officer on this ship.   Carolyn couldn’t be in better hands.”

“ _ My _ hands.  I have to go to her!”  He tried to get up again, but fell back to the bed, exhausted, before Uhura or the nurse could move to restrain him.

Uhura turned at the sound of steps approaching behind her.  Kirk approached Apollo’s bedside.  “You two have things under control here?”  He peered at Apollo’s back for a moment, then stepped away enough not to have to see it.

Apollo’s grip on M’Benga’s arm tightened.  “I do.  Apollo suffered third degree burns over 30% of his body, second degree over another 35%.  He’s not going anywhere until he finishes dermal regeneration and fluid replacement.”

“Is he threatening you?” Kirk asked M’Benga.

“No.  He’s in no state to threaten anyone.  He’s worried about Lieutenant Palamas.”

“I’m checking up on her next.  Uhura, keep watch over our...guest, will you?”  Kirk waited for her acknowledging nod, then left them, presumably to find McCoy and Palamas.

“This should help with the pain, Apollo,” M’Benga said.  He loaded a hypo and reached around to press it against a patch of unburned skin on Apollo’s throat.  “You should try to rest.  I need to get some supplies.  I will return.”  He turned to walk away from the biobed.  The injured man actually whimpered.  M’Benga rested his hand on Apollo’s palm again, avoiding the blistered areas.  “Uhura, I think he needs physical contact to ground himself.  Would you be willing to take my place so I can get some more supplies?  Some of these burns are going to need debriding before the regenerator is going to work.”

“Of course.”  She pulled a chair up close to M’Benga and Apollo and took a centering breath.  This was not her first time grounding a badly injured telepath,or whatever category Apollo actually fell into, not by a long shot, given how accident prone Spock was.  Almost as accident prone as the captain, who had spent at least as much time sitting vigil by the stubborn Vulcan as she had.  It was her first time performing such a service for a near stranger who had spent the better part of a day threatening her and her crewmates with enslavement, but there was a first time for everything.  She squeezed her hand in between M’Benga’s forearm and Apollo’s hand, lacing her fingers with his to help M’Benga extricate himself.  “Doctor M’Benga will be right back,” she reassured Apollo.  The familiar/unfamiliar fuzziness, tinged with that all over stinging ache, settled into the back of her mind.

“Why are you being kind to me?  You don’t want me as your god,” Apollo mumbled into the bedding.  He was getting loopy from whatever M’Benga gave him.

“Maybe I want you as a friend, Apollo.  You had friends, long ago, and family.  I think that’s what you need now.  Not subjects.  Family.”

“I miss Leto.  And Artemis.  I miss Carolyn, where is she?”  

“Doctor McCoy is taking care of her, remember?”  She started humming, to distract him, segued into a lullaby her grandmother used to sing to her when she was little.  Apollo didn’t talk again for a while, but she could feel his grip slacken and his breath even out.  He wasn’t asleep, but at least he wasn’t wound up quite so tight.

M’Benga returned.  “His vitals are still stable on what I gave him,” he told the nurse.  “I’m going to give him a bit more, see if we can put him out before I start debriding the third degree burns.  Apollo, I’m going to give you medicine to help you sleep while we heal these burns.”  

Apollo squeezed Uhura’s hand.  She nodded to the doctor, who depressed another hypo against Apollo’s throat, waited a count of five for the drugs to begin to take effect, then went to work on his badly burned neck and shoulders.

McCoy gestured to Uhura from across the room.  She extricated herself from the now-sleeping Apollo and made her way to him.  “What’s up?” she said.

“Palamas.  She’s not good.  She’s got a severe concussion and diffuse microhemorrhaging throughout the brain.  I’ve put her in a coma to rest the tissue, but I can only take her blood pressure so low before putting her into organ failure.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it’s even odds she lives at all, and if she does, she’ll probably have severe neurological damage.”  Uhura’s mind ran through her half dozen favorite curses in as many languages.  Palamas hadn’t deserved this.  And no doubt, both Kirk and probably Apollo would blame themselves for her injury and likely take it out on each other, which wouldn’t do anyone any good.  She tried not to think about blaming Apollo and Kirk in equal measure for their behavior.  Kirk had tried.  He really had.

She shook her head slowly, lips pressed hard together until she felt like she could speak.  McCoy’s face mirrored her own.  “Just...don’t tell Apollo until both Doctor M’Benga and I are with him,” Uhura said.

She took her place back in the chair by Apollo, in case he woke up.  Debriding was apparently a long, tedious process.  She pulled out her datapad to search for a song she had heard performed at an ancient arts festival some time ago, a paean to Apollo, supposedly reconstructed from tablets a couple of centuries before.  She thought its familiarity might be comforting.  Once she found it, she transferred it to the speaker at the head of the biobed, so that it would play softly while she listened through it to get the notes and pronunciation right.  Once she had it down, she added her own voice to the singers on the recording, just loud enough for M’Benga, Apollo, and the nurse to hear.

Spock was exactly the last person she expected to see walking through the doors to sickbay carrying a large arrangement of blue-violet hyacinths nestled among boughs with shiny, dark green leaves.  Kirk stood beside him, carrying a pair of trays with oily triangles of pastry arranged on them.  He set the trays down.  “The bigger tray is for the medical staff.  I’ll drop it off in the break room.  The nine pieces on the small tray are for Apollo.”

“It is critical that there be nine,” Spock noted.

Uhura stopped singing to ask, “What are they?”

“Baklava,” Kirk said, shrugging.  “It’s the only Greek pastry I could think of on short notice.”

“They are extremely sweet,” Spock noted, not quite pulling a face.

“He’ll need the energy,” M’Benga noted.  “If he can keep them down.”

Uhura folded her arms across her chest to stare down the Captain.  “Why the change of heart, Captain?  I thought you planned to throw him in the brig as soon as he was mobile.”  That came out a little more sharply than necessary.  

“Spock has a hypothesis.  At present I’m willing to run with it.” The Captain set down the exactly nine baklava on a table near the bed.  Spock set the floral arrangement--offering?--beside it.  “And I realize now my response to our guest was colored by...someone I used to know.  How is Lt. Palamas?”

“You should speak to Dr.McCoy.”  

Kirk nodded curtly and hurried away, clearly spurred on by her tone.  Spock stayed behind to stand at the foot of Apollo’s bed, awkward in his stillness.  M’Benga looked up from his work.  “The meds I gave him will start wearing off soon.  The dermal regeneration is taking well, but he still has a couple hours of debridement and regen before he’ll be in any shape to be up and around.  Nurse Issa, the third degree burns on the upper back are prepped for regen.  I’m starting on the scalp.”

“Understood.  I think he’s waking up now.”  Issa scrubbed at his forehead with the back of his hand, sighed in annoyance, and paused to pull on a fresh pair of gloves.  

“You doing okay, Rafe?”

Nurse Issa opened and closed his fists a couple of times, working out the cramps from holding the dermal regenerator for so long.  “Yeah.  Do...um...do espers all reflect sensation like this when they’re hurt?”

“So far as I know.  Though Vulcans keep it pretty locked down.  If you start getting reflected pain from a Vulcan, it’s a very bad sign.”

Apollo twitched, gasped once.  M’Benga held his arm, careful still to avoid the worst burns, still pink and damp with newly regenerated skin.  “You’re safe, Apollo, he said quietly.  Safe and among friends. You’re not alone.”

Apollo’s eyes opened.  Spock had placed the floral arrangement such that it would be immediately visible from Apollo’s limited field of view.  “Laurel branches,” he said, faintly.  “And hyacinth.”  He licked his lips.  “You do remember.”

“The ship’s data banks remember,” Spock said.

“I do not know you.  Come over where I can see you.”

Spock stepped around Uhura to crouch next to the house plant.  “Commander Spock.  The captain is occupied at present.”

“The one who looks like Pan,” Apollo said.  “But your people are savages.  Ruled by dark gods, beyond even our ken.  How come you to settle among these men?”

At the mention of dark gods, Spock’s cheek twitched.  “Long ago, my people embraced logic and reason in place of emotion.  Those of us who remain are people of peace.”

“Those...who remain?”

“The Vulcan home world was destroyed less than a decade ago.  I am one of a few thousand survivors.”

Apollo felt silent for a moment.  The regen unit hummed above him.  “Is your family...gone?”

“I was unusually fortunate among my people.  I was able to rescue my father, along with the matriarch of my clan.  My brother and sister were off world at the time, and so were spared.”  He paused.  “My mother perished.”

“Hyacinths,” Apollo mused, then his eyes flew wide..  He tried for a moment to sit up, but M’Benga’s hand tightened on his arm, and he relented.  “Carolyn.  I must see her.  Touch her.  Please.”

“Carolyn is critically injured.  A severe head injury.”  M’Benga said.  “Her survival is uncertain.”

“Hyacinthus,” Apollo cried, shaking his head as much as he could with his cheek pressed against the biobed.  “Am I doomed to kill my beloved again?  I would rather fade away than suffer so again.”

“There will be no fading on my watch, god or no god,” M’Benga said.  “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”

Nurse Issa interrupted.  “I have finished with his back.”

“Good.  Get his scalp, then we’ll let the tissue rest for fifteen minutes and turn him over.  The front isn’t nearly as bad.  Apollo, we should have the burns treated in the next hour or so.  If you are very careful, and you take some fluids, I will let you take a support chair over to visit Palamas.”

“A god should not be so weak.”

“Even the gods have their bad days,” M’Benga said, handing a cup of pink liquid with a straw in it to Issa.  “This much in fifteen minutes.  If he gets queasy, tetra by inhaler, I don’t trust the ondansetron with his physiology.  If he can’t take fluids orally, we’ll have to put a line in.”

“Understood, doctor.”  Issa gestured to Spock to make space for him to stand next to Apollo, then held the straw to Apollo’s lips.  “Stuff tastes awful unless you’re dehydrated.  Then it’s ambrosia.”

Apollo sipped at the liquid.  “I must be dehydrated.”

“Small sips. You want that to stay down,” Issa reminded.

Uhura caught Spock’s sleeve with her free hand.  “Thanks for bringing the laurels.”

He brushed her fingers with his.  Uhura half wondered if he was performing, letting Apollo know that she was taken.  “One does not thank logic.  It is appropriate to bring objects that provide comfort to the injured.”

Ah, plausible deniability.  The arrangement could be seen either as an offering in the traditional form, or as a gift in the human tradition of bringing flowers and sweets to the ill.  Kirk and Spock could be so resourceful when they worked together.  “Will you be returning to the bridge, then?”

“My orders are to remain here, to observe our guest.”

To guard him, Uhura corrected silently.

Issa enlisted Spock’s aid in turning Apollo onto his back.  Uhura turned away to preserve the man’s modesty, such as it might be, she hadn’t gotten the impression that Greek men were as upset by exposure as people of most modern cultures were.   When she turned back around, he was covered in the most critical location by a light wrap.  He had, even with the reddened patches, an impressive physique.

Issa began running the dermal regenerator over the worst burns, which on this side were on his lower legs.

“I feel as though I can converse more freely with you now,” Apollo said, his voice stronger.  He had been given more to drink, and sipped at it cautiously.  “You have certainly made strides since I last knew your kind.  This dermal regenerator.  My people had similar devices for use at need.  Though we had other means of accelerating healing as well, more specific to our kind.”

“Using your ability to manipulate electrical fields?” M’Benga asked.

Apollo looked away from M’Benga and Uhura for a moment, distracted or possibly weighing whether to continue to speak.  “No.  We did not begin cultivating worship merely to satisfy ourselves.  There is power in the focused intent of many.  That intent can be channeled to do work.  I was the one among my people to discover how to focus the intentions of humans to heal.  It was my gift, so to speak.”

Issa interrupted them.  “I need to move the cover,” he warned Uhura and Apollo.

Apollo seemed completely oblivious as to why Issa might have warned him that he was about to be exposed in front of Uhura.  When she turned away, he said, “Have I offended the lovely lieutenant?’

M’Benga saved her the embarrassment of explaining.  “I suspect we have slightly different standards of bodily privacy than you do.”

Uhura stepped away from the biobed, hooking Spock by the elbow to walk him a few steps away.  “So, what’s your hypothesis?”

“Apollo has been isolated for far longer than is healthy for his species.  Upon encountering others, his need for companionship caused him to act rashly, and our response to his actions, not only in what we did, but in our perceptions themselves, affected his responses.”

“So you’re saying that he was reflecting our anger and fear back at us.  That would explain how different he was with Carolyn.  But how does that help him now?”

“We must maintain a positive mindset in his presence, respectful but not servile, so that he will begin to see us as companions rather than subjects.”

“Great minds think alike, Spock.  Carolyn and I have been working on him since we went down to the planet.”  Carolyn.  

“Please, I must see Carolyn now,” Apollo said from his bed, voice raised enough to break into their conversation from across the room.

Uhura and Spock returned to Apollo’s bedside to see M’Benga and Issa gingerly lifting him into a support chair for the trip across sickbay.  She had not yet gone to see Palamas, and swallowed a knot in her throat that rose at the prospect.  

As they reached the bed, M’Benga dropped a hand onto Apollo’s shoulder, lightly on the newly healed skin.  Uhura stepped closer, just brushing his arm with her body.  Behind her she could feel Spock’s shields thin out, not entirely, just slightly, as if he were readying himself to jump in to protect her if she got in over her head...or perhaps to lend support to Apollo as well at need.

Apollo reached out to grip Palamas’ hand.  “If you worshipped me as you once did, I could save her,” he said.

M’Benga turned to him.  “Sounds like now is the time to talk shop.  How would our worshipping you save Palamas?”

“As I said before, healing requires me to focus the intent, the love, of many people.  You do not know me, and what you do know you do not love...not most of you.”

“No, but we do love Carolyn,” Doctor McCoy, who had been hovering near the head of the biobed, fiddling with her oxygen supply, said.  “She a member of our crew, and crew is family.  Sometimes more than family. That something you can work with?”

“Perhaps.  I need music.  But you will have forgotten all the old healing songs.”

“What will you do with the music?”  M’Benga asked.

“Music aligns the intent of the singers.  To sing together is to align the will.  If the intent is understood by all, any song will serve...though it should be easy to learn and easy to sing.”  He coughed.  Hummed a brief melody in a light, improbably beautiful tenor that broke into another round of coughing.  “I fear my voice has not yet recovered from the smoke.”  His large thumb stroked along the back of Palamas’ unresponsive hand.  “How fares she now, physician?  I am near blind away from my temple.”

McCoy shook his head.  “I’ve given her everything I can to keep the swelling down, to reduce the brain damage.  There are no safe techniques for assessing what level of function remains until her body clears the worst damage and allows the inflammation to subside.”

“The swelling pulls the cells that carry thought apart from each other, destroys the pattern, and who she is dies moment by moment,” Apollo said.

“Exactly.”

“Then there is little time to lose.  I cannot wait to regain my voice.  Lovely Uhura, you were introduced to me as one who shares the gift of song?”

Uhura nodded, feeling her cheeks heat slightly, then more so when Spock confirmed, “The lieutenant is an exceptional musician.”

Uhura’s hand flew to cover her mouth.  “Oh, your ka’athyra!  It was destroyed with the temple,” she said, turning to look at him in the shock of realization.

“It is fortunate that it was merely a reproduction,” he says, by way of forgiveness.

Apollo met M’Benga, McCoy, and Uhura with his measured gaze.  “I speak now not as your god, but as a man who hopes to save his beloved, and as a fellow healer.  Will you help me?”

McCoy snorted.  “If I can figure out how to keep him,” here he chucked his chin at Spock, “from killing himself with his Vulcan voodoo I’m sure I can keep up with you.”  The twin looks of consternation on M’Benga’s and Spock’s faces when McCoy referenced “Vulcan voodoo” were priceless.

“Very well.”  Apollo turned to Uhura.  “We need a song.  Simple in refrain, lovely to hear, and comforting in sentiment.  A song that weaves the singers together and pours out love.”

And if that wasn’t being put on the spot, Uhura didn’t know what was.  So, something folk by genre, something she knew by heart and preferably had sung with the crew before, maybe an older song, pre-contact.  A line floated through her memory.  “ _ In this bright future, we can’t forget the past… _ ”  She nodded firmly to Apollo and the doctors.  “I have it.”

“Excellent.  Bring as many of Palamas’ closest friends here, to the place of healing.  The more who hear and sing for her, the more power is available to be focused.”

“If they sing along, does it matter if they’re in the room?” McCoy asked.  “We can run the song through the comm system, get all four hundred voices together.”

Apollo smiled broadly.  “Four hundred souls is an embarrassment of riches to bring to a healing.  Yes, absolutely, do this.  And your captain, have him explain that all must focus their thoughts, their intentions, upon Carolyn in her hour of need.”

“I will explain the plan to him,” Spock said, then turned on his heel and started for the door to sickbay, not quite running.

“Spock!” Uhura called, to get him to pause.  When he did, she said, “Tell him to cue the music for No Woman, No Cry and put the lyrics up on all the screens.”

“That one?”

“You got a better suggestion?” Uhura snapped.  Not the time to backseat drive, sweetheart.  That got him moving again.

Palamas’ friends, also known as half of Uhura’s department, arrived in a small herd, about thirty historians, sociologists, psychologists, and linguists quietly filing into sickbay and spilling into the hallway just outside the door.  Apollo waved at them, a gesture not unlike a benediction, from the support chair.  M’Benga had found a bit of gold and green fabric to drape about his shoulders like a stole.  He managed a genuine smile at seeing them all.

The comm system chimed.  “This is the captain speaking.  As you may know, Carolyn Palamas was critically wounded during our recent mission.  As you also may know, we have picked up a passenger, Phoebus Apollo, who has asked us all to help him focus our intent, the energy of our will as I understand it, to heal her injuries.  All we have to do is sing along and offer our voices to Apollo and Carolyn Palamas, to her health and speedy recovery.  So at this time I will turn the comm over to Lieutenant Uhura.”

McCoy handed Uhura a larger than usual comlink.  “Better quality mike.  I use it to record lectures.”

“Right,” she said.  Adrenaline pooled, burning, under her diaphragm.  She was never nervous singing with friends.  This was different.  Charged.  She held up the mike.  “Okay, you all know this one.  We’re doing Bob Marley’s No Woman, No Cry.  Don’t just sing it, sing it to Carolyn, got that?”  Okay, deep breath, it’s magic karaoke time.  She allowed the first few bars of reggae music rolling out of the comm to suffuse her, began to move her hips a little to the beat. “Yes, I remember, when we used to sit…”

It was a good thing Uhura had years of practice with things getting really weird, really fast.  The air around her started to feel almost thick...an illusion, certainly, just one of the hundred or so ways the human brain tried to synesthetically interpret telepathy.  The bright, unfocused epicente, toward which her attention was drawn must be Apollo.  By the end of the first verse, she could feel the threads of...whatever they were doing...growing more complex, more voices joining the song.  The feeling was loud, tangled, unbalanced for a few moments, but then it crystallized, the threads forming into brilliant harmonies of sound and light.  She wasn’t sure she could stop singing now if she wanted to.  

By the time she reached the last repeating line, “Everything is gonna be all right,” she began to believe that it would be, and after two more repeats, she felt the strands binding them release, leaving her feeling hollowed out and empty.  Her legs dropped out from under her.  Familiar hands caught her under the arms, eased her down, shifted her body so it lay against their owner’s chest.  When had Spock gotten back to sickbay?  Familiar fingers rested gently, briefly, against her face, assessing and at the same time easing the shock of suddenly finding herself alone in her head.  “I’m fine,” she said, waving him off.  “Just woozy.”

Spock helped her to stand.  Everyone else in the room looked as much like startled rabbits as she was sure she did.  After a few seconds, McCoy’s eyes refocused and he bent to check the readings on Palamas’ biobed.  Apollo was turned toward the biobed, one of Palamas’ hands clasped between his, staring adoringly into her still face.  McCoy pronounced his verdict.  “Vitals look much better, intracranial pressure is down into the normal range.  I’m keeping her in the artificial coma for at least another twelve hours before anyone tries to wake her up, to be on the safe side, but you seem to have supplied a miracle.”

Apollo, for his part, didn’t look any the worse for wear at all.  He looked, well, he looked as strong and youthful as he had when they had first met him on the planet’s surface, but his face had changed, softened, his smile gentler and more genuine.  “I could not have done it alone,” he said, not magnanimously but with an air almost of surprise, as though he were trying on a new way of thinking about these puny humans surrounding him.  “Thank you.  Uhura, you sing with conviction and grace.  And...someone else lent me clarity.  I have never before been able to direct the energy with such precision.”

“Was that you, hobgoblin?” McCoy tilted his head toward Spock, who acknowledged Apollo with a slight nod.

“While I hate to deprive you the opportunity to admire my Olympian perfection of form,” Apollo said, infusing the words with a spark of humor she hadn’t heard coming from him before, “I would prefer to walk among you clothed.”

“Of course.”  M’Benga led him out through the crowd, leaving McCoy to shoo away Palamas’ well-wishers.  She waited, with Spock, the two of them having taken on the role of deity-sitters.

Given Apollo’s Greek aesthetic, she should have known he would choose the skirted option, and knowing M’Benga, it was no surprise he appeared in Medical blues.  A blue headwrap, held in place with a gold colored laurel circlet, presumably replicated, was fashioned to cover his head where the hair had been burned off, the remaining curls trimmed and left outside to frame his face.  The effect was...improved by the fact the man had the kind of legs and ass one would expect of a Greek god.  She looked over at Spock, who quirked an eyebrow in agreement.  

“Something to eat?” he said, proffering the plate of baklava.

Apollo returned to his seat by Palamas’ side.  Uhura served him a slice of baklava with a fork, not knowing how he would choose to eat it.  He picked it up gingerly and took a bite, eyes bugging out a little in surprise.  After a moment to chew and swallow.  “As you say, a very sweet dessert.  Rosewater and honey...I don’t recall it being prepared with quite this much honey in my time.”

“What will you do now?  Do you want to return to your planet, or travel elsewhere?”

“I think...I think it will depend on Carolyn.  Doctor M’Benga informs me she will require assistance for a time, depending on how much,” He paused to sigh, “Damage was done before I, before we healed her.  I was born on Earth, but my people used to sail the sky as you do now.  Perhaps I will find a new home to settle."  At the last, he lost a little of the confidence he had exuded until a moment ago.  "But where can I belong?" he added, more softly.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have never heard Bob Marley's No Woman, No Cry, I tried unsuccessfully to provide a link, so you'll have to type the title into Youtube. You are right to expect that the crew of the Enterprise would probably not understand the context of the verses, but that never stopped us before as folk performers.
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> As always, comments make us a community and I'd love to hear from you, even if it's just a smile and a wave.


	5. Lessons in Teamwork

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew help Apollo make plans for the future, but must make a detour to respond to an emergency.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild warning: Mild innuendo and a verse from The Ball of Kerrymuir--I blame Scotty.

In the three weeks they spent traveling back toward the Federation proper, Apollo had adjusted better than any of them had expected.  He still had a tendency to like to be the center of attention, and when he sang installments of the Odyssey in the rec room, he not only basked in the standing ovations, he frankly deserved them.  Scotty rigged him a power source and he’d gradually been allowed to access more power from it as he had demonstrated responsibility.  He’d moved in with Palamas as soon as she was discharged from sickbay and spent the bulk of his time reading up on several thousand years of human medical advancement, occasionally getting into arguments with McCoy and M’Benga that Uhura suspected they secretly enjoyed.

He had taken to wearing Starfleet uniform during the day, minus insignia of course, but insisted that he preferred the skirt to shirt and pants.   When she checked up on him, he was sitting at a workstation in sickbay, leaning back in a chair with his feet on the table, a datapad in one hand, frowning a little at it.  She had to admit he rocked that skirt.

Palamas sat next to him in her support chair, fiercely attacking a squeeze ball with her right hand and admiring the view up Apollo’s skirt.  She waved at Uhura with her left hand and tapped through menus on her datapad, then flipped the screen toward Uhura.  Images tiled the screen like comic panels.  Sunrise/bunch of guys in engineering red building something/frowny face/happy face/Spock’s face/Spock’s face?

“Ok, so I get good morning, I’ve been working hard, it sucks but it’s going to be worth it.  What’s Spock there twice for?”

Apollo took a look at the screen.  “Oh.  Have you met his brother?  He’s apparently a healer of some kind.  I think Carolyn wants to know what you think of him.”

“Sol?  He’s...oh dear.  Oh dear.  No, I think you’ll both like him.”

 

She found Spock at his comm station, urgently speaking to Malkiah Lorenz-Grayson, who was looking puffy and blotchy compared to when she’d seen her just a year ago.  Was something wrong?  She walked over to peer at the screen.   Spock didn’t wave her away, so she felt justified in staying.  “Just a moment, I’ll get Sol,” Malkiah said, then heaved her heavily pregnant bulk out of the chair and waddled out of range of the screen.  Oh, that made a lot more sense.

Solomon Grayson replaced her at the screen a moment later.  He was pleasantly overweight, with the slight rounding of the face that came with it.  His long, dark curls were pulled into a loose braid, save two ringlets that hung loose in front of his ears and complemented the blue and white embroidered yarmulke pinned to the top of his head.  “Spock!” he said, smiling broadly.  “Since you call so rarely, I assume this is business.  Nyota!  Are you well?”

“Solomon.”  Spock said, with a slight sigh.

“Rabbi Grayson,” Uhura added.  “I’m fine.  How is Canada?”

“It’s winter.  We have what, a meter of snow on the ground?  I’m freezing my pointy ears off.  So, Spock, what is it?”

“A historian in Lieutenant Uhura’s department has suffered a severe traumatic brain injury.  Significant damage to the left temporal lobe, with right side paralysis and global aphasia.  Doctor McCoy believes she might be a candidate for template reconstruction.  On cursory examination and a review of the appropriate literature I concur with his assessment.”

“I see.  You would like me to have a look?”

“If possible.  We are docking at Starbase 4 in two days.”

Solomon stroked his beard.  “Can she be brought Earthside?  Malkie is due in three weeks.  I can’t go off planet right now.  Last year we finally had our first...”

“Mandatory honeymoon!” Malkie interrupted loudly from elsewhere in the room.

“Yes, dear, mandatory honeymoon,” he chuckled.

“Can we not…” Spock protested weakly.

Malkie leaned in so she was visible on screen.  “Tell you something Nyota, these Vulcan men are such workaholics nature has to resort to death threats to get them to take a vacation a couple of times a decade.”

“I suspect transport to Earth can be arranged,” Spock preempted any further conversation.  “I am also of the opinion that you may be able to gain some information about your personal situation from her companion, Apollo.”

“Greek, is he?” Malkie asked.

“He is the Apollo who was worshipped by humans as a god in Ancient Greece.  We seem to have acquired him while completing planetary surveys.”  Uhura envied Spock his perfect deadpan delivery.  When he said unbelievable stuff like that, people just believed him.

Solomon didn’t speak for almost ten seconds, possibly a new record for him.  He took a deep breath before saying, “In what form have you acquired a petit god?”

“A 1.93 meter tall humanoid male.  He appears to be functionally immortal, can store and release energy in coherent form, and is a powerful empath.  He is also romantically attached to Lieutenant Palamas.”

“You know I have a particular affinity for Raphael.”  He pulled out a cord around his neck, on which hung a medallion with a sort of stylized shepherd’s crook on it.

Spock shook his head.  “I fail to see how that is relevant.”

“Raphael and Apollo most likely spring from the same historical kernel, Spock.  You are sending me my patron.”  The expression on his face, fear transmuting to joy and back to fear worried Uhura.  He turned to Malkie, who brushed his hand with hers.  “Brother,” Solomon said.  “Is this Apollo a good man?”

Spock, too paused before answering.  “I have known him to be.  But he takes on the characteristics of his companions.  It is his nature.”

“Then we must endeavor to be worthy of him.  Do send your petit god and his mate to Thunder Bay as quickly as can be arranged.  We’ll get her sorted and back on her feet.”

“You will contact Dr. McCoy for the details?”

Solomon smiled.  “Yes, yes, as soon as I am off the line with you.  I’m not as distractable as you think I am.”

“Yes, you are,” Spock said.

“I am not going to dignify that with a response.  It was nice to visit with you, Nyota.  You should come out sometime after the baby comes.  It’s a girl.  We are calling her Amanda Rose.”

Nyota leaned in to the screen.  “I will see that he does.  Goodbye, Sol.  Good luck with the baby, Malkie.”

“Goodbye, brother,” Spock said, then cut the connection.

“Hard to believe he’s Vulcan,” Uhura said.  She sat down on the bed to pick up the two dresses, the better to compare them.

Spock sat down beside her.  “My world rejected him when he was still a child.  He found a home with my mother’s family on Earth.  It is not entirely his fault that logic escapes him.”

“Not entirely his fault.  How magnanimous of you,” she teased.  “Really, we should take time to visit them when we next get leave Earthside.  To see the baby.”

“It is customary,” he said, relenting.

  
  
Uhura was at her station on the bridge, as usual, when the distress call came in.  “Captain, I’m getting a call from Sigma Iota 3 research colony.  There’s been an avalanche.  It’s buried half the facility, high casualties, requesting search and rescue assistance.”

 

“How fast can we get there?”  Kirk asked.

Sulu checked his screen.  “Three hours at maximum safe speed.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sulu.  Change course for Sigma Iota 3 and inform Starfleet.”

She sent the message to Starfleet.  Kirk tapped the shipwide.  “This is your Captain speaking.  We are diverting to Sigma Iota 3 to assist with search and rescue.  All medical personnel prep for beam down in three hours.”

He tapped another key.  “Scotty, give me best speed and get a team ready.  We’re going to need earth movers and transport through debris.”

“Aye to that,” Scotty replied.

Another switch.  “Bones, I need everybody you’ve got.  We could have casualties in the triple digits.  Has Apollo passed the medtech test yet?”

“Last week.”

“I’m authorizing a brevet commission as a Corpsman.  Get him out of that damn dress and outfitted with cold weather gear.  Meeting in my conference room in thirty minutes.  Bring him, I want to know if he can augment sensors, help us find people under all that snow.”

“Spock, you and Uhura see what you can do to maximize sensors ability to find bodies under snow.  Sulu, you have the conn.”

Thirty minutes later, Uhura, Spock, Chekov, McCoy, Apollo, Scotty, and Kirk sat around the conference table.  Apollo fiddled with his PADD as if unsure what to do in a conference meeting.

Kirk addressed each of them in turn.  “I’ve been in contact with one of the colony scientists.  The colony administrative building is under tons of snow and rock, and the weather is less than ideal.  Chekov, you’re here because of your transporter skills.  You’ll be on the main transporter.”

“Captain, Mr. Chekov,” Scott said, then waited for acknowledgement to continue.  “We have to be very careful with transporting out of the snowpack.  Removing mass will create voids and risk collapse of the whole snow mass.”

“Can we beam space fillers into the voids to replace survivors?” Kirk asked.

Scott nodded.  “Yes.  We’ll need expanding foam on standby.  The transporters will need to be programmed to fill in spaces as bodies are removed.”

“Chekov, you set up the program.”

“Aye,” Chekov acknowledged.

“Scotty, we may need to remove material on the ground.  What do you need from me to make that happen?”

“I’ve pulled a team of six.  We’re modifying portable tractors to bring down by shuttle if possible.  When you say less than ideal, what are we talking about?”

“Significant snowfall.  The weight of the new snow is what brought down the snowpack in the first place.  It’s not forecast to let up.”

“Captain, is there risk of additional destabilization of the snowpack?” Spock asked.

“Unfortunately, yes.  Fortunately, the colony is evacuating anyone not directly involved in rescue efforts.  Unfortunately, all able bodied hands are running search and rescue, so that doesn’t reduce the numbers in jeopardy much.  Which leads us to you two.  What issues are we likely to have finding survivors?”

Spock replied for them.  “Getting sensors to penetrate to voids under the avalanche could be a challenge.  We may also miss survivors with severe hypothermia.”

“Not dead till warm and dead,” McCoy reminded.

“We’re working to calibrate to best penetrate snow and concrete.  We’ll have best results with boots on the ground, get the sensors as close as we can, use multiple arrays to triangulate.”

“Right,” Kirk acknowledged.  “And that brings me to the two of you.  McCoy, first, how many medics and cross trained personnel do we have at the moment?”

The doctor checked his data pad.  “Twenty-four.  We should send four to six down, keep the main staff on the ship to treat casualties here.  I’m reconfiguring the spaces near sickbay to serve as treatment space, according to standard protocols.”

“And you’re not going down,” Kirk said.  “You, on the other hand,” he turned to Apollo.  “Sensors are going to be shit down there with ion discharges, blowing snow and debris.  I need to know how you operate.  What kind of range do you have and is your talent directional?”

Apollo fiddled with a stylus.  “I do not understand, Captain Kirk.”

Uhura turned to him.  “Can you use your abilities to find people?”

“Oh.  I don’t...I’m not sure.”  He thought it over.  “I suppose.  I can perceive each person on this ship.”

“Where’s Christine?”  McCoy said.

“Is she missing?  Oh I see.”  He closed his eyes briefly.  “Christine Chapel is two compartments aft of Sickbay with Rafe Issa.”

Kirk nodded approval.  “Not bad.  Dr. McCoy, I’m detaching Corpsman Apollo to aid search and rescue on the ground.  I’ve got further plans for you, God of Healing, you’re in for a long day.  Within the hour, I need you and...Dr. M’Benga to write up a plan for how best to use your talents to maximize survival and recovery for a mass casualty event with up to two hundred souls.  Expect a mix of hypothermia and crush injuries.”

“Of course,” Apollo intoned gravely, then added a belated, “Sir.”

“Operating within a chain of command is a learning curve for all of us.  Believe me,” Kirk said.  “Remember, none of us know how your abilities affect you.  I am counting on you not to overextend yourself, and to tell someone if you become dangerously fatigued.  Don’t take advantage of our ignorance to play cowboy like him.”  He chucked a thumb at Spock.  

“Says the cowboy in chief,” McCoy remarked.

Kirk chose to ignore McCoy’s commentary.  “I will be sending down a portable generator on your frequency so you can help tractor out debris.”

“All right, so six to go down from engineering, five medical including M’Benga, Chapel, and Apollo and...Uhura.  I’d like you to coordinate the sensor arrays on the ground.  We’ll send down additional personnel from security to help with the heavy lifting at need.  Everyone understand your assignments?”

“Captain, I…” Spock started.

“I need you up here, not freezing your ass off dirtside.”

“Aye,” chorused the room.

“Dismissed.  I’m getting back on the line with my contact on the ground.”

 

 

Uhura returned to the bridge with Spock to puzzle out the best sensor settings.  It was strange.  Even though they had been a couple for years, they were still at their best together on duty with a puzzle to solve.  She supposed it was a good thing that work consumed almost the entirety of their lives.

When they finished the modifications to the ship’s sensor array and a half dozen portable boosters to take down, Spock said, “I do not like the idea of you going down to the planet.  The danger of an additional landslide…”

Uhura interrupted, “Well I don’t like it when you fly into volcanoes, but I deal.  And so do you.  Besides, somebody’s got to keep an eye on Newbie.”

“Three weeks ago he captured the ship and demanded that we bow down and worship him.  And now he’s Newbie?”

“You fixed him up with your brother.”

Spock pretended to be busy studying frequency readings.  “I have my reasons.”

“Come on, what was that about?”

“I am not at liberty to discuss it.  If you wish, you may ask him.  I doubt he will tell you.”

“I’ll just ask…”

“Malkie won’t tell you either.”

  
  


Uhura stood next to Apollo in the transporter room.  They were both dressed in full cold weather kit.  Apollo squirmed in his.  “I feel as though I am encased in pillows,” he complained.  “And my feet are in prison.”

“You’ve never lived anywhere it got really cold, have you?  Have you even seen snow?”

“I have seen snow.  It snows in the mountains of Greece.”

The first team of engineers beamed down.  Uhura and the second team climbed onto the transporter pad.  Uhura pointed out where to stand and Apollo took his place on one of the shiny circles, a crate of sensor boosters in his arms.

Gold specks whirled around them and were replaced by fat swirling snowflakes.  “Apollo’s not that unheard of as a name.  Let’s not get into too much explaining of who you are until we have free time, Corpsman.”

“If you believe it wisest.”

“Just follow my lead.”

A woman in winter gear ran forward to meet them both.  “Gita Lossi,” she said.

Uhura returned her two handed handshake.  “Nyota Uhura, Communications, Enterprise.  These sensor boosters will improve our ability to pinpoint survivors.”

Apollo held out the crate.

“This is Corpsman Apollo.  He’s Olympian.  An empath.  He’s also going to be helping us locate survivors.”

“Excellent.  I can take him.  You’ll need a vantage point and a scribe,”  she said to Apollo, gesturing him to follow.  Uhura watched them go, wishing she could follow to keep an eye on him, but the sensor boosters weren’t going to place themselves.

Half an hour later she called Lossi.  “How are we doing?”

“Still beaming aboard survivors.  Apollo’s doing great--boy leaks like a sieve, doesn’t he.”

“That boy is a hell of a lot older than you, Gita.  If you’re not averse, he can draw from you to boost his sensitivity.”

“My husband’s still missing.  I am the opposite of averse.  Thanks for the suggestion, out.”

Her attention was consumed by tuning the sensor arrays and walking from one to the other, brushing the snow off them.  It sounded from the comm chatter like all survivors had been found and were in the process of being beamed out.  They were nearly done.  A low rumble, more felt than heard, made her turn her head and look toward the mountain.  At first, there was only a puff of white drifting halfway between the peak and where they stood, then a huge slab of snow slipped free and began barrelling toward them.

Uhura flipped open her comm.  “The whole side of the mountain’s coming down on us.  Get everybody out you can!  Civilians first!”

An electric blue crackle lit up the twilight sky.  The snow held, miraculously still, in a mesh of sizzling light.  For a moment, Uhura registered surprise, not having realized the energy Apollo wielded was something other than conventional electricity, then she shouted back into the comm.  “Pull me and Apollo last.  He’s holding back the avalanche.”

She changed channels, got a member of the engineering team.  “Turn every power source you can get to 335 megahertz and stay on the line.  Remember the thing we did with the song?  Grab everyone you can and follow my lead.”

She brought in every receiver in the colony.  “You see that miracle over there on the mountain?  We have a god on staff and he needs everyone’s prayers right now.  Tall guy on the ridge.  Say his name.  You can do it, Apollo!  Keep it up, Newbie!”  She only felt ridiculous for a moment.  “Come on people, he needs you to hold up that weight until we can beam everybody out.”  She kept screaming into the wind, into the comm unit, voices gradually joining in with her as they saw Apollo holding back a mountain of snow.  They were almost there, fewer and fewer dots signifying boots still on the ground.  Then it all let go.

The last thing she saw was a mass of white descending on her, raked with the fading remnants of blue fire.

  
  


She shimmered onto a transporter pad, flanked by the last two engineering techs to beam up and Apollo, curled in fetal position on the floor.  There were a good dozen crewmen in the room.  “Come on, he’s going to need us,” she said.  She threw her arms around Apollo, noting with a sense of irony that his needs were exactly the opposite of Spock’s at a time like this.  Chekov ran forward from his station at the console.  “We’ve got you,” she told him.

“ _ Ya tebya ponyal _ ,” Chekov murmured.  The engineering techs, Issa and a colonist she didn’t know crouched around him.  

Issa reached under Apollo’s weather gear to feel for a pulse.  “That’s it, stay with us,” the nurse said softly.  “There you are,” he added, as the palpable glow of his empathic sense returned to resonate around them all.

As soon as Apollo was up and walking and had been convinced to chug some undoubtedly vile protein shake, M’Benga put him to work tending the wounded.  Word had gotten around fast, Apollo was personally credited with saving at least fifty lives, almost half of those in the last moments before they beamed out.  Every conscious colonist made a point of thanking him, and every heartfelt handshake put a little color back in his cheeks, until he was back to his old self, humming ancient melodies while deftly wielding a dermal regenerator.

 

That night, Apollo performed the last installment of the Odyssey.  When he finished, it looked for a moment like no one would step up to the mike, not wanting to follow the performance of the god of music, but Scotty of all people worked his way up through the crowd, a wicked grin on his face.

“And now for something completely different.  A giftie for you, Apollo, and for the lovely Carolyn.  I had thought to sing Donald McGillavrey tonight, but I have a much better idea.  From the great Scottish poet Robert Burns,” he paused dramatically.

Oh, no, Uhura thought.

“The Ball at Kerrymuir.”  The music started on the PA system, accompanied by a brief refrain Scotty played on a pennywhistle.  “Remember that,” Scotty said.  “So ye can sing along with the chorus.”  She looked over at Apollo, who looked back, puzzled.  

Spock jostled her elbow.  “This selection is most unwise.”

She reached around the back of Palamas chair to tap Apollo on the shoulder.  He turned to her.  She whispered, “Don’t do the thing.  On this song, don’t.”

“What thing?” Apollo said with his best innocent smile.

“You know what thing.  We’ll all regret it in the morning.”

Scotty began to sing.  “Four and twenty virgins come down from Inverness,” to a smattering of whistles and laughter.  “And when the ball was over there were four and twenty less.”

“You are prudes,” Apollo said.  “But I will try.”

“Singin’ balls to your partner, your arse against the wall,” Scotty continued.  Uhura was going to kill Scotty.

Apollo failed, but oddly enough as the singalong progressed and the verses got dirtier, amusement was the main sentiment flowing through the room.  People were giggling and shouting the refrain, Apollo loudest of all.

They took a break to talk and mingle after Scotty’s bawdy ballad.  Scotty straddled a chair near them.  “A present for you both,” he was saying.  “So now, if she’s interested in a little messing around, she can just hum the tune and you’ll know.  Better than loading nudie pictures onto her data pad.”

Uhura smirked.  “Why wouldn’t I have loaded nudie pictures into her data pad, Scotty?”  The engineer turned bright red.  Served him right, she thought.

  
  


The offerings that piled up in his quarters over the next couple of days were heartfelt, if a little unorthodox.  Given that he and Palamas were going to be traveling to Earth, most of the crew confined themselves to tiny objects of value, data crystals loaded with movies, books, and music, letters, in a couple of cases tiny carvings or jewelry, always homemade by the giver.

She’d had to wade through most of the medical staff to see the two of them off at Starbase 4.  Palamas was still stuck in the chair, but she was sitting straighter and had managed to learn to say goodbye in a soft, uncertain voice.  Apollo stood behind her, protective and a little nervous looking.  He’d make new friends in Canada, she was sure, especially with Sol looking out for him.

She thought he’d be bigger than Elvis, but it turned out he was just the right size to be himself.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy this short documentary on recreating the music of ancient Greece, which inspired this work.
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> This story is part of **the LLF Comment Project,** whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
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**Author's Note:**

> Fixed so far: Removal of sexist remarks about Carolyn Palamas. Apollo looks like he should, given period depictions. Crew behaving like adults.
> 
> Four chapters is a guess, given it's an episode redo.
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> I'm also prairiedawn on tumblr.
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> Comments are food for writers' souls.


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